


To Build A Home

by ari_sia



Category: Sonu ke Titu ki Sweety (2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Polyamory, Queerplatonic Relationships, Tears, couples who cry together stay together, like i always say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:41:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26198032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ari_sia/pseuds/ari_sia
Summary: Sonu has been running from love for so long that he has forgotten what it feels like.Ghasita and Lalu help him remember.
Relationships: Sonu/Titu
Comments: 10
Kudos: 9





	To Build A Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarartist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarartist/gifts).



> "What kinda no homo"  
> here you go sarah, all the homo for you.

Sonu laughs.

His feet, dipped in the pool water, had just gotten used to the water’s temperature and the alcohol tasted sweet as it burned his throat. He had Titu sitting beside him and his family fighting for him behind him.

He had it all and so he laughed, and yet as he did, he felt hollow.

Almost ten minutes ago he had almost lost it all and his heart still thumped from the residual terror.

“I’m going to get married.” Everyone’s laughter vaguely registers in his head.

It is a joke. But he almost wants to get married so he could have someone in his life who wasn’t Titu or related to Titu.

Apart from Titu, he had no friends to speak of, no real connections outside the family but he had never felt like he needed anything else.

If he had—if he had lost him, just in case, then he would’ve been left with nothing but hollowness and how do you confront that kind of fear?

The moment he is alone he bursts into tears. Sobs the way he never had in years. At one point he tries to choke his sobs by placing his hand on his mouth because he just keeps breaking and breaking and he doesn’t know what to do about it. He just can’t stop sobbing.

He had been so _scared._ The ground beneath him was still shaking, his heart trembling and quivering from the fear.

He wraps his arms around himself to stop himself from shaking so much, and he sits there, in a dark corner of his room, the entire night in a pool of his own terror and sadness.

[❁](http://www.i2symbol.com/symbols/flowers/x2741-eight-petalled-outlined-black-florette-symbol-flowers-symbol-smiley-face)

It doesn’t even take them a whole day to settle back into their old routine. They’re watching some old Punjabi movie and Sonu feels fine right up until the moment he doesn’t.

Titu’s fingers brush against his when he takes the popcorn bowl and his hands burned from the touch. He settles down on the couch and tries his best to focus on the screen but Titu made it hard to do that.

Titu’s head leans on his shoulder for a second and he feels every nerve in his body quiver, when his knees brush against his thigh, he shivers slightly. He leans gently towards Titu’s side and as his scent starts to engulf him, he wonders how long until Titu _did_ get married, how long until he would forget their casual intimacy. How long until all the pieces of Titu that were his and his alone were taken away from him? How much did he have left?

But Sonu is _scared scared scared_ and he doesn’t know what to do about it. Every time Titu so much as looks at Sonu, he feels his heart start to melt a little and it scares him. He can’t leave Titu, of course not, he wouldn’t recognize himself without Titu. He could although, protect him from a distance.

Sonu decides to run. From the intimacy, from Titu’s scent and his laughter. He would tear out all the small pieces of him so there would be nothing left for Titu to take with him.

Titu notices of course, how could he not?

He flings himself on the couch next to Sonu with a frown on his face as Sonu irons his shirt.

“Are you still mad at me?” Sonu doesn’t look up from the shirt when he asks, “Mad?”

“You feel distant”, Titu sounds so disheartened it almost makes Sonu break. Almost.

“I do?”, He manages to sound oblivious.

“Yeah”

Sonu turns the iron off and shrugs at Titu.

“I could never stay mad at you even if I wanted to, you know that” 

“Yeah, I do” Titu smiles at that, seeming a little sad but convinced.

It’s that easy to convince him and while it isn’t a lie Sonu feels awful for tricking him like this but what else is there to do? He doesn’t know.

[❁](http://www.i2symbol.com/symbols/flowers/x2741-eight-petalled-outlined-black-florette-symbol-flowers-symbol-smiley-face)

He shouldn’t have come here. Why did he though? He had just gotten too used to spilling his guts out to Ghasita and Lalu and now he needed to let this out now more than ever. So he did and he talks and talks and talks—but there is no response.

There’s an unusually sombre silence which makes Kartik want to run out the door and never come back. What had he been thinking? You couldn’t just say these things out loud. He knew what it sounded it like, he knew exactly what he had been confessing and yet—

“Is it”— _no, that’s not it_ —“am I”— _not this either_. Then: a breath, “how do I know what love is?”

“No one knows what love is”, Ghasita answers, frustrated, without a second’s delay and then stops. He looks at Lalu and Lalu nods with an understanding look on his face. When was the last time he had seen the pair look so serious?

“No one knows what love is,” he is softer this time and it soothes his heart a little.

“Lalu and I have been together since forever, everyone knows that. There were people who laughed, whispered, said things. They laughed because they thought they knew what love was supposed to be and somehow Lalu and I were wrong.”

Sonu tried to absorb that information, “You’re—I don’t—you were in love?”

“Yes and no.” Ghasita says not making it easy for Sonu, “We love each other, just not in the way you think.”

Lalu jumps in to explain, “I’ve never wanted to experience a relationship like that. Romance, sex, they don’t interest me, never have.”

“Nothing?” Sonu asks just to confirm, remembering his fuckbudy from college who said something about being aromantic but Sonu hadn’t been paying attention. He should have listened.

“Nothing.” Lalu shrugged, “But we’re still partners.”

“I know that” Sonu’s eyebrows furrow slightly and Ghasita sighs.

“Not just business partners. Partners in life, for life. Family. Significant others. Whatever you kids call it these days.”

“I don’t under—” Sonu is cut off mid-sentence by Ghasita, “No one did. We didn’t really understand it either, but we were always more than friends.”

Sonu looks at the frustration evident on Ghasite’s face and understands it. How hard it must be to have your relationship with someone who is so important to you, be undermined over and over. To have no one really listen to you or even try to understand.

“Rukmini” Lalu starts as Ghasita massages his head, “made things balance. The two of us were too erratic and she was the stability we needed. She was far smarter than either of us and that’s one of the things that drew me towards her. She loved us. We loved her. She completed us.”

“and you’re more than just close friends even though you don’t feel romantic attraction.” Sonu wants make sure he really understands. Ghasita and Lalu were entrusting him with a piece of themselves that they had hid for so long, a piece of themselves they didn’t need to talk about but they were, for him, so he could understand himself better. He owed them that much.

It’s Ghasita who speaks up this time, “Rukmini and I asked him to build a home with us. You drink with your friends, party with them, share your sorrows and happiness but you don’t build a home with them.”

Lalu gently places his hand on Ghasite’s hand and Ghasita leans towards almost instinctively, “We were a family. The three of us would raise our kids, take care of our home, support each other and share the load.”

Sonu can feel something in his head click.

“You don’t label something like that as ‘ _being friends’_ ” Ghasita almost spits out the last part.

His eyes burn with the tears he’s trying to hold back. He doesn’t understand why he’s crying really.

“The three of us are partners. Always have been. We love each other but no one would understand that.So, Rukmini ties a rakhi on his wrist and suddenly no one bats an eye. We’re undermining a deep-rooted tradition, I know but they’re caging love into these narrow definitions and making rules that go against the very nature of it. If that’s what it took for us to be able to live as a family then we didn’t care”

Sonu sniffles slightly and he feels like a child being comforted after coming home with a scrapped knee.

"I don’t understand them and they don’t understand us, this was the only way we felt safe. At peace. Don’t be scared of what you feel Sonu,” The way Ghasita says ‘Sonu’ feels like a warm embrace and warm cup of milk “Don’t be scared of your desires or it will eat you up.”

He doesn’t know he is crying until his hands Lalu puts an arm around his shoulder and pats him gently. Then he dissolves into tears for the second time that week but this time he has people, his family there to support him.

[❁](http://www.i2symbol.com/symbols/flowers/x2741-eight-petalled-outlined-black-florette-symbol-flowers-symbol-smiley-face)

Sonu, who had dedicated his entire life to protecting Titu, had been too oblivious to realize why had he been so aware of the boy, so entrapped by him. He felt a constant need to protect him, keep him close at all times.

Titu had been the one to fall in love first. A girl he met in college. The relationship barely lasted a month but it was enough to send Sonu off on an eternal run from his feelings. It was the first time he had realized that maybe, just maybe Sonu wasn’t what he thought he was to Titu.

That’s when the hook-ups started and they were such a good distraction that Sonu never stopped. Even when he stopped feeling anything.

It was all in front of him, the way he found comfort in the fact that their house faintly smelled of Titu’s cologne at all times because he used too damn much of it. Titu cooking for him, Titu waking him up in the morning, Titu, Titu, Titu. It was all Titu. All the important pieces of his life were the ones that held Titu and still it had taken him an excruciatingly long time to realize what was it that he felt exactly.

Loving Titu was the only thing he really knew how to do, as if he was made for the sole purpose of loving Titu. Holding him was effortless, making him laugh was a blessing, knowing they were closer than most friends made him a little smug and having him beside him, always, was more than he deserved but the only thing he needed to breathe easy. The safest he’d ever felt was in Titu’s embrace and he had found home in their easy laughter, the smile on his lips and the naïve look in his eyes.

No matter how painful it would get, he would never stop loving Titu. His entire being rebelled against the very idea of it. He didn’t know what the future held for them but right now he felt that if he ever stopped loving Titu he wouldn’t be himself anymore.

Titu was everything his soul ached for.

But what is he going to tell Titu? In realizing how much he loved Titu he had also realized that they would always be the closest friends but they would always be separated by the chasm created by his one-sided affection. To have him so close, to be able to touch, feel his warmth and yet be so far away from him.

It was more painful than he could ever put into words.

-

“I can’t do this anymore.” Titu says and Sonu’s stomach drops. It was expected, Sonu had been avoiding Titu as much as he could for the past week but it was scary because he didn’t know what he would say. How would he explain any of this? Titu deserved an explanation and yet--

“Why are you doing this?” Titu was angry, but mostly he sounded hurt, “If you’re still mad at me why don’t you just say so?”

“I’m not mad at you.” Sonu quietly says not sure how to go about this conversation

“Then what is it?—and don’t tell me that it’s nothing because I might be oblivious to most things but when it comes to you Sonu I _know_ when something isn’t right.”

“If you don’t want me around anymore then just say it!”

“That’s not it!” Sonu shouts, scared of the phrase, scared of what Titu had just insinuated. Titu sighs and then almost in a whisper asks:

“Then what is it? Why can’t you just talk to me?”

“Because I’m too scared to lose you!” Sonu blurts out and it’s too late to stop now. The words leave his mouth before he even knows what he is saying.

“Why would you lose me?” Titu asks incredulously

“Because I love you”, Titu goes still but Sonu had to get this out, “and I almost lost you and it hurt so much, still does. I can’t take that pain—knowing that we can’t—knowing that that one day someone will come along and be everything that I can’t.”

Titu nods slowly, “That’s—” Sonu stares at the ground, he doesn’t know what he wants to hear, “good.”

Sonu’s head shoots up way too fast and there is Titu, eyes trembling and breath shaky _, why,_ Sonu almost asks.

“Because I love you too.” Sonu places his hand on his mouth to muffle his cry.

 _Since when_ , Sonu wants to ask and Titu answers, “I knew when I saw you cry.”

Sonu is trying his hardest to keep himself from sobbing again when he asks, “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“How could I?” Titu is crying by now and Sonu doesn’t know what he is feeling, “You wouldn’t even look at me.” Titu’s voice breaks as does Sonu’s heart and he walks towards Titu slowly.

“I thought you’d realized; you always know things about me even before I know. I thought you hated me”

“I could _never_.” Sonu breathes out as places a hand gently on Titu cheek and realizes that he’s shaking. “I’m sorry. I should’ve known better.”

Titu sniffles and looks at him with teary eyes. Sonu finally sees how haggard Titu looks and he feels a pang of guilt realizing it was his fault.

“Yeah, you should’ve.”

Sonu cups Titu’s face in his trembling hands trying his damndest to be as gentle as he could. Everything was so slow that he could feel every little shift in Titu’s body, he could feel the way Titu’s neck tilted towards him just a little and as gently as he could manage Sonu kissed the man in his embrace and the universe held its breath.

It was soft and barely lasted a second and yet it was the most vulnerable Sonu had let himself be in front of another person in almost a decade.

Titu’s hands started shifting, clinging onto the back of Sonu’s shirt pushing him closer. Sonu let out a soft laugh, relief and contentment mixing together knowing this was where he belonged. He rested this forehead against Titu’s letting this insane euphoria and wash over him and then he kissed Titu like he was the only man who mattered, the only person in the world for him and he meant it.

Maybe he still doesn’t know what love is but he knows what Titu is to him.

He wants to build a home with him and that’s all that matters.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!  
> Please leave a comment or come scream at me on my tumblr: [username-ari-ver9](username-ari-ver9.tumblr.com)


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